AECP Level 3 - Botanical Illustration inspired

Hello hello!!

After my fear of textures conquered, I went ahead to do another daunting technique - Make White flowers, because why not? Jaycee Gasper in his Botanical Illustrations inspired - watercolor edition class, breaks everything down for you, so well. From how to do the leaves to the play of shadows and the various values of colors, to bring in the depth and contrast.

I rummaged through my stash, to think of which flowers in white will look good? And then - I bit more than I could chew with Magnolia Gandiflora stamp set, with two big flowers and 100 leaves (ok not hundred, but too many). I have never seen this flower, in real, so I had to check out how it looked on the internet and, oh the velvety petals and buttery leaves, made me want to, try my hand at it.

I stretched my paper, like Jaycee showed and though the stamping was tricky, I wasted 2 stretched panels just for stamping the flowers, I learnt the mistakes and they were worth making. I stamped the flower with Industrial diamond. (my first panel got waste as my stamping the second time got a bit overlapped. I was stamping Silver stone dye ink. The second panel I stamped once on another panel, but the layers of watercolors, did dilute it a bit and I couldn't see the petals well enough near the pollen area, (to give the right depth) so on my third stretched panel I used  Industrial diamond dye ink .I used the Altenew 24 pan set watercolors for my coloring. 

I made 6 different greys, as per the reference image's shadows on the petals. There were different values of blue, yellow and reds from 24 Pan set for eg Starry night + Tea party + Pocket full of sunshine , Cool summer night +Red cosmos + Summer afternoon. To make greys was actually, quite a learning for me. Also testing them on a scrap piece to realise, which is lighter or darker. After coloring with watercolors, I went in with pencils to the edges of the flowers and also in the pollen area and around.

I must admit, leaves were, very very difficult! 

If I were to do it again - I would  try two things :

a) I may skip the outer blue or

b) I would use masking fluid on my flower first and do the blue background and then come back to color the flower.

But I am quite happy with the result, 

 I hope you all like it too :)

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